Renewing Bonds

After 60 Years, Childhood Chums Find Each Other - 10 Minutes Away.

TAMARAC - — Caroline Itzler and May Langsdorf were friends for 20 years, but they drifted apart shortly after high school.

That was 60 years and 1,500 miles ago in the Bronx, N.Y. But on Saturday, Itzler and Langsdorf saw each other for the first time since 1935. They renewed a friendship left withered by time.

"It was incredible, like meeting a pair of strangers," said Itzler, who moved to Tamarac from Yonkers, N.Y., four years ago. "She had changed so much in all the years, but little by little the face came back again."

The families looked through yearbooks yellowed with age and talked, peeling back memories they thought were forgotten.

"We had such a pleasant evening," Itzler said.

Although they had been apart for so long, there was a bit of irony: They have lived within 10 minutes of each other for four years.

"If I had just picked up the phone book, I could have found her," said Langsdorf, who lives in Lauderhill. "We shop at the same Publix and eat at the same deli. Who knows how many times we may have passed each other in the store or at the deli?''

It was Langsdorf's husband, Ben, who helped make the reunion possible.

Earlier this year, he saw a newspaper ad and contacted a company called Old Friends. The company, based in Orinda, Calif., specializes in finding people. The Langsdorfs plunked down $120 and sent the company all the vital information they remembered about Caroline and her husband, David Itzler.

In July, the company sent the Itzlers a card telling them that the Langsdorfs were looking for them.

"Would you mind if the Langsdorfs contacted you?" the card asked.

The Itzlers, ecstatic when they learned their friends were looking for them, immediately called the company and eagerly awaited a call from their friends. "It was so funny," Caroline Itzler said. "I never thought I'd see her again, and I get a card asking me if I would like to hear from her! When she called, I didn't even remember what she sounded like, it had been so long. But after a while, it was like we had never separated."

The women met as little girls, growing up in the same Bronx building. They played on the swings at St. Mary's Park at 149th Street and St. Ann's Avenue, and attended P.S. 77 elementary, Walton Junior High and Walton All Girls' High School together.

Caroline Itzler even introduced Langsdorf to her future husband shortly after they graduated, Langsdorf said.

The families remained close until the Itzlers moved to Yonkers and they drifted apart. At first, they heard about how the other was doing through mutual friends, but eventually heard no more.

Walton High sponsors an annual reunion in the area, and May Langsdorf said she had attended many of the reunions hoping to spot her old friend, but she never saw her. When Ben Langsdorf wrote to the company, she doubted it would work. She didn't even know if Caroline was still alive.

"I was so surprised to hear that they had located her," said May Langsdorf, who moved to South Florida 28 years ago, the last four years in Lauderhill. "And she was so close. It's so hard to believe. We get to continue the friendship we started all those years ago."

The evening they spent together is just the first of many more to come, each woman said.

"I'm so glad they tried to find us," Caroline Itzler said. "She was smarter than me. I never would have thought to try."